McCaskill Takes on Television Services over Consumer ‘Truth in Billing’ Tactics

Missourinet, June 26, 2014 

Senator Claire McCaskill’s Consumer Affairs Committee is going to investigate billing practices of the cable and satellite television industry.

She’s asking customers to send their horror stories to her as part of her committee’s look into possible “truth in billing practices” legislation. She says some of the practices are unfair to consumers and need to be cleaned up. In fact, she says, she’s a victim.

“You’ve got a ten dollar charge on your bill and when you call in, you find out what you’ve been charged ten dollars for is now standard. This happened to me. They were charging ten dollars for a certain speed of internet. Well, I call in and I find out that’s the standard speed now. And I said, ‘When were you going to quit charging me the ten dollars?’ and they said, ‘When you called in.’”

She says consumers should not have to put up with stuff like that. She says cable and satellite TV companies make a lot of money by continuing to bill people for something that is now free. She also wants to look at the tier system that makes customers pay for a lot of channels they don’t want.\

McCaskill says she doesn’t want government to interfere with a healthy and competitive market place, but she says there clearly are some questionable practices in the industry.

Click here to get the audio interview.

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